Life Unbothered

by Charlie Elliott

  I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and realized it had turned off sometime in the past couple of hours. My mood went from a suitor bearing flowers for his ailing love, to a dread that left me instantly flushed.

  “Is she okay?”

  Barbara looked at me dumbfounded as tears flowed out of her puffy eyes. “Sophia has cancer all over. You weren’t here when the doctor told us an hour ago. No, she’s not well.” Barbara’s eyes grew more intense with desperation as she gave the diagnosis. “She has cancer.”

  The word “cancer” didn’t immediately register. My instincts led me to comfort Barbara instead of hearing the true words—what that meant for Sophia, what it meant for us, what it meant for me. I gave Barbara a hug. She sobbed, her soft body trembling in my arms.

  A dozen of Sophia’s family members were in the small waiting area. Everyone was glad to see I had finally arrived, this magic man of Sophia’s whom they had heard so much about. I had met two of her aunts and one uncle at a Syros family barbecue Sophia and I attended about two months ago. The other visitors were new faces except for Alexa and Rosa, who were sitting solemnly on brown plastic chairs that lined the back wall of the small waiting area. As I met them one by one, they all expressed how glad they were Sophia was with somebody who cared about her. Her life had not been the most auspicious one on record, so an educated guy from the right upbringing appeared to her family as a fortunate turn of events—no matter my mental incontinence.

  The lugubrious aura overflowed in the immediate area as I sat on one of the plastic chairs and waited for Sophia’s release from the recovery room. Her relatives were searching for answers as to why a twenty-eight-year-old woman would be stricken with cancer. They were all very devout Catholics and truly believed that it was God’s will, and now her cure rested in higher hands.

  I was not from an overly religious upbringing. Not because my family wasn’t religious, rather we were just too busy when I was younger to attend church regularly. I stayed out of discussing the religious doctrine Sophia’s family held with great conviction as a cure for her disease. My belief rested more on some higher source laying a card on the table, and it came up cancer. If her condition turned out to be mortal, God wouldn’t cure her. The only thing God could cure Sophia of… was virulent life itself.

  As I sat slumped over staring at the floor, a stout yet feminine hand slowly rubbed the top of my shoulder.

  “I’m so glad Sophia has you,” said Beatrice, the more grandmotherly of Sophia’s two aunts. I pulled my head up to view her friendly round face. Her thick glasses magnified the size of her eyes, making her appear a bit overzealous at first sight, but she had a comforting smile that overshadowed the optics of her enlarged orbs.

  “Yes, she is so lucky to have found you, Wade,” the younger Aunt Marlene swooned in a loving voice as I resumed my floor staring.

  I noticed the space around the chair filled quickly as five pairs of middle-aged feet appeared on the linoleum. I glanced up to see five women standing over me, each of them revealing strained smiles.

  “Oh Wade will take care of her,” came in from my right side.

  “You will take care of her, won’t you?” came in from my left.

  All five women nodded affirmatively in unison, which left me with only one uneasy answer, “Yes… of course I’ll take care of her.” The ladies had made short work of negotiating and hammering out an oral contract with me.

  I continued sitting on the chair with my hand cupped around my chin while Sophia’s two aunts, her mother, and two other women I’d just met engulfed me with their gleeful smiles. A tingling sensation crept up my spine when I figured out I had just pledged to take care of Sophia. They continued gawking with a glimmer of hope in their eyes, as if I could do something for her. Glancing at each one of their gleaming faces, the scene started to make me claustrophobic. The ladies encircled me, perhaps afraid I would walk out, losing the only hope for their beloved Sophia—other than God.

  Dizziness began setting in as the view of the women began warping back and forth. I imagined they were laughing and chanting one-by-one, “Wade, you said you’d take care of her. It’s all on your shoulders now. You promised.” It became evident that being a savior could come at a heavy price.

  The women around me dispersed gradually, allowing the reality to sink in—Sophia had cancer. My head began to spin anew as I wondered how to handle the situation. Getting up and walking out on the whole scene did come to mind. I could concoct a story that Sophia and I were merely dating and our relationship wasn’t as serious as they thought, but promise to visit her occasionally during her hopeful recovery. Or for a dramatic flair, go running down the hall screaming, “I can’t take this,” jump into the elevator, and disappear forever. In need of some quiet reflection, I excused myself, left the flowers on an empty chair and ducked out of the waiting area while family members continued to wait.

  About fifty feet down the wide hall was a children’s wing. I slipped through the swinging doors as unassumingly as possible. The wing was dead quiet and dimly lit from the few working fluorescent lights. The hospital staff was not using the area at the time and gave off a vibe of suddenly being transported to an abandoned building with all the fixtures still intact.

  I shoved my hands into the front pockets of my Levis jeans and stiffened my arms, pushing hard until I heard gentle little rips in the pocket seams. Inhaling deeply, I searched for some comfort within the confines of the deserted wing as the first swirl of an anxiety tornado formed in my stomach. I wouldn’t know how to cope with her having cancer. If I stayed with her, would I have to constantly take care of her and wait on her day and night? Spoon feed her and clean up drool running down her chin? My mind went into overload as my ignorance of cancer initiated different awful scenarios popping rapid-fire in my mind.

  Guilt flushed over me as I pondered selfish concerns about how her cancer would affect me, when I was not the one facing the dread of the diagnosis. Needing some consultation, I removed my phone from my front pocket and called my dad. He was usually much better about business matters than personal ones, but I just wanted to talk to somebody outside of Sophia’s family.

  “Hi, Dad.” I paused, trying to stifle my emotion. “Remember I told you about Sophia’s operation today? Uh… she apparently has cancer. Nobody could tell me what type of cancer yet, but by the reactions of her family, I’d presume it’s not optimistic.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad, Wade. I’m sorry to hear that,” he said slowly.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s just very sad.”

  “Well, she’ll probably be fine. Cancer is often treatable nowadays.”

  “I don’t know, her mom said Sophia has cancer all over, whatever that means.”

  “I’m glad her mom is there and I’m sure she has many other concerned friends like you waiting for her.”

  “But she’s more than a friend,” I admitted.

  My dad didn’t say anything for a moment and then sighed. “Son, it’s nice of you to be there, but you do not need to get wrapped up in somebody’s problem right now.”

  My eyes bulged as I heard his response. “I’m already wrapped up in this, Dad.”

  “Well, as I said, it would be better to just be a good friend to her,” my dad stated with steely control.

  I took his comment to imply that all I should do is visit her once in a while and maybe bring some flowers or a little stuffed animal—similar to the escape plan I had envisioned earlier in the waiting room.

  Just be a good friend to her? How could he say that? How callous, cold, insensitive…

  “You know, I love that woman,” I said with a shaky voice. “How the hell can you talk about being a good friend to her?”

  There was a silent gap over the line before my dad responded. “Wade, I’m sorry. Your mom and I didn’t know you two were that close. You never told us.”

  “Well n
ow you know. I need to see if she’s out of the recovery room. See you later.” I hung up the phone before he could respond.

  As my anger brewed, I was feeling pinched from Sophia’s female relatives stooping over me and hammering out a convalescent commitment just a few minutes earlier. I was deferring my fear and anger to my dad even though he had no idea the extent of our relationship. I wanted to explain to my parents over a month ago that I loved Sophia, but could never muster the courage.

  My body felt like it had suddenly gained about two hundred pounds as I stood in the abandoned children’s wing. My posture slouched, and I felt once again, as if I weren’t real. I held my hands in front of me and ducked my head to scan my body visually. I wasn’t sure if I could handle what was to come, but the reaction from my father’s ‘friend’ comment verified the right thing to do concerning Sophia. I couldn’t turn my back on her, couldn’t run away, couldn’t get out of the situation by merely leaving the scene as I had during countless panic attacks. Despite anyone’s opinion, I knew I had to take care of Sophia.

  Upon returning from the children’s wing, I could see Sophia’s relatives gathered in front of the doorway of one of the rooms. As I walked down the aseptic hall at a reserved pace, I peered into the other rooms and noted they were just as drably decorated as every place else in the hospital. All the rooms were identical—just the humanity and tragedies were different.

  “Sophia’s here!” I heard an uncle declare as I approached the group. Her bed was wheeled into the room while I was having an epiphany in the children’s wing. I missed the doctor’s news of cancer, and now I missed Sophia arriving to her room. I was relieved no one alerted me of my absence when I walked through the door.

  As I stepped into room 308, I noticed there was a sink to the right with long faucet handles. Next to the sink was a hypodermic needle disposal bin hanging on the wall with a tiny padlock affixed through a rickety hasp. Small dried blood drippings speckled randomly around the disposal slot on top of the bin. The mirror above the sink was brightly lit by a fat fluorescent tube affixed above it. As I gave myself the once-over in the mirror, the glow emanating from the light produced an exaggerated effect of facial pallor.

  The room had four beds all occupied by females, two on each side of the room. The area would have been square in shape, but a small bathroom cut out one corner. There was one curtainless window extending across the back wall. Sophia was in bed number one, located on the right side of the room nearest to the door and closest to the shared bathroom.

  As I wandered slowly past a few of her relatives, my eyes met Sophia’s. I grabbed her left hand as I moved to the side of her reclined body. She looked somewhat comfortable, considering there was a tube coming out of her right nostril that traveled down into her abdomen for drainage, and two IVs in her arm. One IV was about a liter-sized clear bottle with a glucose solution in it, the other smaller plastic bag contained an antibiotic. Her heavy eyelids strained to stay open as the painkillers still ran through her bloodstream.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Without moving her head, Sophia shifted her dark eyes to meet mine.

  “I love you,” she said in a scratchy, almost silent voice.

  “I love you too,” I said, feeling rather embarrassed as I glanced at all of the relatives standing around the bed. I was trying to speak in an upbeat voice instead of a drab Quaalude-type monotone—which is how I felt as the fatigue of the day was finally settling in. “I told you I’d find your room. How do you feel?”

  “Okay.”

  I shifted my position to make space for the ladies stacking flowers on the nearby bed stand. Someone had picked up my rose bouquet from the waiting area and placed it closest to Sophia’s bed.

  “Do you hurt?”

  “Yeah, my stomach hurts a little, but my throat really hurts right now.”

  “Well, you look good.”

  She rolled her eyes slowly. “I bet.”

  Barbara nudged next to my side. Her face was utterly stricken with grief. The other female relatives tucked in close, obviously wanting to talk with Sophia. I stepped back and relinquished my bedside space I had held for less than a minute. Everyone else in the room casted nervous smiles as they searched for things to say, stuff to share with Sophia. I could tell by her reactions she didn’t want to talk, but it did give her some comfort knowing people were there. No one really knew how to handle the situation; I could include myself in that crowd. The relatives remained for about ten more minutes before Barbara announced that Sophia probably wanted to be alone with me. An instant later, as if choreographed, everyone filed out of the room. I addressed a general goodbye to the small crowd as they vacated.

  Relieved to be alone with Sophia, my legs pressed so hard against the bed railing it felt as if blood would completely cease flowing to my feet. Her black hair stood out against the stark white bed linen as I watched her look straight ahead, seemingly staring at nothing.

  “I love you,” she said, breaking her fixed gaze.

  “I love you too. And don’t worry Honey, I’ll be there for you whenever you need me.”

  Our hands met and I bent over the bed rail to give her a kiss on the lips, trying hard not to bump the tube snaking into her nose.

  “Are you sure you still love me?” she asked with no expression. I imagined she was worried that I might indeed leave her, no longer enchanted with her cancer-stricken body. Her inherent perceptiveness led me to believe she knew the running-off plan had crossed my mind.

  “I brought you the best bouquet of flowers here, didn’t I? I still want to screw your lights out when I come home every night,” I answered. She managed to crack a sarcastic smile and a little half-breathed laugh. “Of course I still love you.”

  “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “We’ll have to wait for the doctors. I heard a nurse in the hallway say they’ll be here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. I’m not sure what kind of cancer you have or the extent of it. Your mom may know, but if so, I didn’t hear. Regardless of the situation, I’ll get you through this just as you got me through my fear of traveling. Many people lead productive lives after having cancer.”

  “Visiting hours are now over,” the speaker above the door blared, then repeated the message in Spanish.

  “Do you have to leave?” Sophia pleaded.

  “No, don’t worry about it,” I said, as if I owned the hospital.

  I sat quietly by the side of her bed for another two hours and didn’t take my eyes off her. Draped over the white sheets, an ivory-colored blanket stretched to the top of her breasts. I scanned her covered body, wondering what was going on inside that slender frame. She drifted in and out of sleep. I stayed until she finally closed her eyes for fifteen minutes solid.

  “Honey, I’m going to go now,” I whispered.

  Her eyes opened wide. “Okay.”

  I gave her a kiss and waved my tongue across the front of her teeth, wetting a portion of her parched upper lip. Her eyes closed as I moved away from the bed. I paused before going out the door to take another glance at her, then as if an automatic mechanical function, my hands drifted into the pockets of my jeans as I turned and exited to the now empty hallway at Harbor General.

  24. The Diagnosis

  The next morning I made my way up to room 308 at Harbor, which now seemed oddly familiar to me, though it was only my second visit. Sophia was on her bed reclined at a forty-five-degree angle. The ivory blanket lay atop her exactly as it had been when I left the night before.

  As I approached to greet Sophia, a dark-haired woman clad in a white clinician’s coat entered and stopped at the foot of the bed. Before I could take another step, a short man passed me and situated himself next to the woman. Both systematically raised their clipboards to scan their notes. It was straight-up eight o’clock – at least the doctors were on time.

  “Good morning, I�
�m Dr. Hieri,” the woman addressed Sophia with self-controlled sincerity.

  “And I am Dr. So,” the man announced as if reciting lines from a script. “I was the doctor who operated on you.”

  “How are you doing… Sophia?” Dr. Hieri had to refer to her clipboard in search of Sophia’s name.

  Dr. Hieri was an attractive Indian woman in her late thirties, with shoulder-length black hair and skin a shade lighter than most people from India I had met in my life. She spoke clearly, concealing any hint of an accent.

  “Are you doing better?” Dr. Hieri asked in a slow, calculated fashion as if Sophia didn’t understand English.

  “Yeah. When will I be released?”

  “You need to stay until we are confident your condition is conducive for release.”

  “She’s kind of anxious to get out of here,” I inserted myself into the conversation as both doctors looked at me in unison, eyeing me from head to toe.

  “And you are?” Dr. Hieri asked.

  “I’m Wade Hampton, her boyfriend.” I extended my hand to shake hers.

  “Okay, nice to meet you,” Dr. Hieri said, then clasp my hand hesitantly and gave a soft handshake. She turned to Sophia and asked, “Does your boyfriend have consent to deal with this matter?”

  Sophia consented with one nod of her head.

  Dr. So gave me a nod of approval, but we didn’t shake hands due to Dr. Hieri being in front of him, blocking our handshake path. Dr. So was a Chinese man about fifty years old. His black thick-rimmed glasses covered all of his eye socket area and half of his forehead, making his receding hairline less prominent. He was about five feet, four inches with a solid, trunkish build that fostered the presence of being stronger than his height suggested.

  Dr. So tugged on the drab green divider curtain around the bed to ensure privacy and pulled opened Sophia’s gown, exposing a long incision running sixteen vertical inches across the center of her body. The scalpel broke the flesh between her breasts and slid down her torso, making a curved detour around her belly button, before concluding at the top of her now shaved pubic hair. Along the laceration about every inch or so, bulky staples pierced her skin to close the wound. Heavy black stitching intertwined sparingly beneath the staples, causing the opposing sides of flesh to press against one another in a craggy raised fashion. The end result looked like a scale model of a red-walled canyon with a dried blood river running down the center of it. I tried to subdue my reaction by redirecting my attention back to Dr. So. His eyes scanned her slender midriff as he scrutinized his work.